bloom VOLUME NO. 1
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF COMMUNITY
CONTENTS / BLOOM, VOLUME NO. 1 P . 3 Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!
P . 6 The Cassatt Collection: A Touch of History
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dear Readers, Some 120 years ago, a railroad executive named Alexander Cassatt bought several lush acres of land west of Philadelphia and began building a home for his son, Robert Kelso Cassatt. A French-style chateau, the Beaupré mansion was gracious, quietly self-assured. Birds would sing in the woods. The painter Mary Cassatt, Robert’s aunt, would occasionally visit. Conversations happened. Stories got told. Today the Beaupré mansion is known as The Mansion at Rosemont. The carved marble fireplaces are intact. The big clocks tick. The original hardwood floors shine. Bluebirds, cardinals, and robins still sing their melodies in the stately woods. But it’s the people who live here now — the artists and writers, the gardeners and musicians, the travelers, educators, and community builders — who make this place so extraordinary to me. No matter what is happening in the world at large, no matter what pressures a pandemic, for example, place on the greater social fabric, our residents are engaged, active, and ingenious. They’re staging a Zoom version of “Macbeth.” They’re digging deep in the earth of the garden. They’re making music videos. They are connecting again in person over a fine dinner. They’re appreciating the little things like colorful birdwatching. And our team members — as inventive and generous as the residents themselves — are always there to help. I’m lucky to work among these remarkable people. I feel the privilege of my responsibilities here every day. I’m happy, then, to share some of our stories with you, in this inaugural issue of bloom, a magazine about this place where life really does appreciate. – Carisa Livingston, Executive Director
610-665-3360 / TheMansionAtRosemont.org P . 7 The Curatives: Paris and Joan Sterrett
P . 10 A Moving Day: Amy and Fergie Ferguson
Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! by Beth Kephart
On the fifth floor of the Mansion, in an apartment made distinct by historic rooflines and open space (not to mention his wife’s gracious ear for song), Charlie Niesley plays his clavinova — a digitized piano that facilities a sing-along session. On some days Charlie is joined, when he sings, by a barbershop quartet. On others he plays and sings old country/western tunes accompanied by harmonic voices. If Charlie’s not entirely sure how the magic happens, he is certain that it is a kind of magic, a kind that Charlie will soon be sharing through the music videos he’s been lately producing. Charlie was six years old when he started playing the piano in the old double home he shared with his aunt and uncle. His older cousin had a gift for the ivories. If mastering the keyboard, the rhythms, and the legato meant taking lessons and practicing those scales and classics, Charlie would — for the next seven years. By the time Charlie reached high school, his impassioned piano songs were well known among family and friends. (continued on page 5)
Charlie Niesley playing piano in The Mansion ballroom, perpetually forging new moments with timeless songs.
When you love something as much as Charlie loves the piano, you carry it forward — and Charlie did. Only Uncle Sam had the power of taking Charlie away from his various keyboards in 1951, for a stint in Germany during the Korean War. But upon Charlie’s return, he married his college sweetheart, Elma, and Charlie and Elma enjoying coffee on The Mansion patio. kept playing — there in the house and out among friends. “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a song Billie Holiday made famous, was a favorite through the years. “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!,” a rapid-fire namesake song that Ella Fitzgerald sang taking all the right breaths in all the right places, could bring the house down. Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” with its dramatic final curtain, evoked memories for those who gathered close to hear. All this time, Charlie was doing his job as a computer programmer. He was riding his horse in what is now known as Chesterbrook. He was revving up his motorcycles and attending to one of his other great life passions — the fabulous (to hear Charlie tell it) spreadsheet, into which he slotted every gallon of gas bought, say, or every restaurant he visited with his wife (what they ordered, how much it cost, how good or bad it might have been), or the time it took to drive from one place to another (a data collection process that involved the stop watch that he keeps in his car to this day).
But it was the piano that brought Charlie and Elma to The Mansion at Rosemont. Long before the Niesleys moved in to the fifth floor directly above the beautiful grand piano during April 2019, Charlie was volunteering his piano playing during The Mansion’s Social Hour on Thursdays. He volunteered at The Mansion for nearly two decades, even as he also volunteered for lowerincome housing communities in southwest Philadelphia, run by the Presbytery on behalf of the federal government. There, in southwest Philadelphia, Charlie would pick up the Baptist hymnal, and play. His audience sang along. Since the Niesleys made the roomy and modernized apartment at The Mansion their home a little over a year ago, Charlie has brought even more music to The Mansion at Rosemont playing the grand piano, playing the organ, playing the upright. Sometimes Charlie plays for a scheduled gathering. Often his performances are impromptu — Charlie playing from his famous fake book of songs, or from the repertoire of boogie-woogie music popularized by Pine Top Smith, or strictly from memory. His favorite songs all came to life in the first half of the twentieth century. After 1950, he says, with a chuckle, the music died. Music exists to be shared, and Charlie — perpetually forging new moments with timeless songs — is on the vanguard of that sharing. Playing and recording the songs he loves so that they and the memories they provoke may be passed on and on.
He volunteered at The Mansion for nearly two decades...
Charlie and Elma enjoying coffee on The Mansion patio.
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WHO IS “PINE TOP” SMITH?
Is there a touch of history in your future? Introducing the
Cassatt Collection: A limited selection of lovingly restored residences with original 1902 features and finishes.
They call boogie-woogie a “driving-blues” piano style — a genre that first emerged among African American communities in the late 19th century. It’s dance music of the most engaging kind — rapid-fire and all engaging. In the late 1920s, its popularity grew as people like Clarence “Pine Top” Smith played it at house parties and elsewhere. Born in Troy, AL, in 1904, Pine Top moved to Pittsburgh as a young man to join Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie in performance. Pine Top was only twenty-five when a stray bullet during what has been described as a “dance-hall fracas” cut short his life.
Those who have been here understand that
The Mansion at Rosemont is not simply a nice name for a senior living community in the heart of the Main Line. There truly is a Mansion at Rosemont, the BeauprÊ mansion built in 1902 by the brother of artist Mary Cassatt as a gift to his son. And now, for a limited time, we’ve made a selection of beautifully renovated original apartment residences available to those who appreciate the ornate moldings, hardwood flooring, high ceilings and timeless artistry of Victorian design, along with all the 21st century amenities.
What’s more, apartments from the Cassatt Collection are now being offered for a limited time with a specially designed promotional package worth in excess of $10,000.
$5000 towards professional design services
$5000 towards packing, planning and moving services
Additional rewards based on planned move-in
To learn more about The Cassatt Collection, or to schedule a tour (either actual or virtual) please contact us at 610 - 632-1492 or see us online at TheMansionAtRosemont.org
The Curatives
Paris & Joan Sterrett by Beth Kephart
Lately, Paris Sterrett has been at work on the
grounds at The Mansion at Rosemont — pruning, weeding, transplanting, de-bugging, energetically weaving in and out of the bushes and flowers and making grand deposits of plucked things in the dumpster. Paris’ gardening acrobatics have been so beautiful, so athletic, so alluring, even, that, according to his wife, Joan (who tells the tale with immaculate comedic timing), some Mansion residents have been pulling up their chairs just to watch — a spectator sport, of sorts, with the most colorful of players. Just as they watched Paris take on the leading role of “Macbeth” in the Rosemont Players Zoom performance, a role he performed dressed in Joan’s black rain hat and rain coat. His dagger? A kitchen knife, of course. Laughter is a curative — a fact one gladly remembers while speaking to Paris and Joan. Joan touches her faux-exasperated hand to her head as she
tells her stories. Paris leans in, a twinkle in his eye. If the two don’t precisely complete each other’s sentences, they do complete each other’s stories, or they attempt to improve them. They’re always improving, Paris and Joan. Always at work making something better — one tale, one insight, one inspiration at a time. You could say that it started, for Paris, in his grandfather’s garden, among carrots and beets and the other growing things he learned to tend as a young boy, at his grandfather’s side. Or you could say that it was being the son of a man who ran a community center for disadvantaged families — and being the son who actively participated as a tutor, at the food bank, and elsewhere — that persuaded Paris, from a very young age, that giving back is the best way to live. For Joan, the antecedents of her own life choices may well be found
Paris watering the gardens that he’s grown to love.
in the uncle who, during her youth, threw an annual picnic for the blind children in the community. Joan loved that picnic. She looked forward to it every year. It may well have influenced her way of seeing and her volunteering — at a local library and food bank, as well as at the ReStore facility outside Charleston, SC, where she helps raise $1 million each year for Habitat for Humanity, work so notable she was recently named Volunteer of the Year. Speculation aside, by the time Joan and Paris met at a master’s degree program in Rehabilitation at the University of Buffalo, their paths were set. Soon after the two married, Joan was at work with paraplegics and quadriplegics in a spinal cord injury center. Paris, for his part, served
disabled Vietnam veterans as a counseling psychologist — testing them and talking with them and helping them find their way to federally-funded education and new careers. It was an excellent life, and yet there was always more to do — more people to get to know, more hours that might be spent making the world a better place. Today, a volunteer at many community outposts, Joan also plays a significant role in The Mansion’s two white elephant shops, particularly the “everything but clothing” shop that resells furniture, decorations, books, linens, and small kitchen appliances, with all proceeds going toward the Friendship Fund. Paris, for his part, has translated his passion for golf into work as the Junior Varsity golf coach at Episcopal (continued on page 9)
Paris and Joan are always making something better. One tale, one insight, one inspiration at a time.
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High School as well as a volunteer coaching position with the Blind Golf Association, which has, for close to 75 years, provided blind or visually impaired golfers with the chance to get out on the golf course and play the game. Paris’ current charge is a 28-year-old woman who lost her sight at the age of eight in the aftermath of a virus. Once each week, weather and pandemic permitting, they head out to the greens — talking in the car, talking out on the golf cart, working on alignment and strokes and swings, then sharing lunch to talk even more. Golf is a sport, yes, but it’s also a social thing — a chance for these individuals to get out into the world and play. A chance, again, to change the world, Sterrett-style, one moment and one person at a time.
A Movin Amy & Fergie
by Beth Kephart
In mid-May, Amy and Gerald (Fergie) Ferguson closed
Paris and Joan taking a leisurely stroll through the terrace in the community arboretum.
the door on their “soulful,” historical Chestertown, MD, home one last time. They’d said goodbye to those who’d worked with them at the homeless shelter and the food pantry. Had one last gathering with the Samaritan men’s group Fergie had nurtured the past many years. Sold a few antique pieces. Packed the things that mattered most. Then they drove the few hours northeast toward their new home, a cottage at The Mansion at Rosemont, and, in the midst of COVID-19, moved in. This was their new home, following twenty- three years on the edge of a town, one half mile from the river. Their cottage at The Mansion was far closer to the Fergusons’ two grown daughters and their families. It gleamed with brand-new appliances (something they’d longed for in their historical home). It offered a beautiful outdoor patio and sat among an abundance of trees — trees more magnificent than any this couple, who has shared a life of love and adventure and who has traveled to162 countries, had ever before seen.
ng Day Ferguson
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The Fergusons unpacked their things. They received the kindness of their new neighbors gratefully and gracefully (there can be, and was, neighborliness even with social distance). They sat outside to watch the birds. They cooked in the fabulous sparkle of their new kitchen. They thought about how best to position a goodbye gift from their Chestertown realtor — a massive bird house — in a squirrel-proof spot. A few days later, their telephone rang. It was the Fergusons’ oldest daughter, a real- estate executive with a designer’s eye, and her husband. “We’re ten minutes away,” the daughter said. “We’re going to help you settle in.” It took but two hours before the Fergusons found themselves in a newly rearranged cottage. Excess things were shuttled away. Rugs were rolled and unrolled in new positions. The books were restacked. The cottage became even more spectacular than it had been the day before.
Sharing a life of love and adventure including traveling to 162 countries.
The Fergusons are, they say about themselves, blessed people whose stories have been shaped by the kindnesses of a high school football coach and an English teacher, a physics instructor, a life-saving physician, so many more. They have given back wherever they can, and already they feel themselves embraced by The Mansion community, where stories of grace and gifts abound. At their new cottage, they say, they think back on all the fortunes of their lives. They think of how lucky they are to be living this new chapter of their lives among the people, trees, and birds of their new home.
– ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE BELKOWITZ –
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Where Life Appreciates 404 Cheswick Place, Rosemont, PA 19010